Across the Divide
by debbiechan
Summary: Spoilers for much of HM arc and "The Lust" manga chapters. A very short, atmospheric piece written to observe Tanabata. UlquiHime.


**Across the Divide; a Tanabata story**

**by debbiechan **

Disclaimer: Kubo Tite and Shueisha Inc. own the rights to the characters Ulquiorra and Orihime; I make no money off Bleach and just make up stuff about it according to revelations I receive from light spots under my eyelids.

Description: G. A short piece written for the UlquiHime FanClub of Bleach Asylum and their 2009 Tanabata Celebration.

~~oo~~oo~~oo~~

"_Everything divide us."~ Bleach 262 endpage_

Every other pop song that jangled on the radio and every other afternoon drama that shimmered in oversaturated pinks on Orihime's failing t.v. screen sent the message that the end of love was the beginning of sorrow.

Women threw themselves into traffic and men drank themselves unconscious because love, sweet precious love, had come to an end.

That didn't seem quite right to Orihime

She had never known an end to love.

Nor had she known a time when there was no sorrow. With every love, a sorrow was born.

From the first time she could stand in her crib and reach out her arms, there had been a hard longing inside her, a weight like a stone, and her mother did not come and pick her up, did not answer Orihime's cries, and Orihime learned that to love meant to be aware of a great divide between people.

It had only made sense to leave the Living World for Hueco Mundo. Saying her goodbye to a sleeping Kurosaki-kun, she had felt the gap she could not close. Tears had fallen on his face like a light rain that makes no difference on a summer day, a rain that seems to barely moisten the soil.

Proving her great love for those she left behind, she had followed the strange, green-eyed being into a perfect Unknown

As the distance grew, so did her love.

Her love for her friends became clearer in their absence, and another love grew in the presence of her captors.

A love for all who are lost and forsaken. What else was Hueco Mundo but a deep, deep hole where all the fear and sadness of the Dead had fallen? The beings who wore pieces of bone on their bodies and looked like monsters and were called Arrancar had such moist, living eyes.

Aizen's girls whose eyes had flashed with hate--what had they been longing for? What did they truly want?

Ulquiorra had looked at her with such deep green pupils and seemed to hold his mouth so deliberately still. He had asked questions, persistent questions, and wanted to understand, but what else was he longing for besides the answers to _how does it feel, are you afraid, what will you do now?_

Did she have to explain loneliness? Didn't he already understand what that was? The biggest distance of all was between the Living and the Dead. Between the Living World and Hueco Mundo was a great divide that no one was supposed to be able to cross.

What Orihime could not explain was how as her distances grew, so did her love.

Orihime had always known this lonely love that was swollen with sorrow. It was love round as a planet and bright as a star and it grew and grew as the hours passed.

At the very top of Hueco Mundo, where five towers stood in the center of Las Noches and a white dome glowed like a full moon under another moon that was a just a sliver of white in the eternal darkness, all the distances came crashing close and the towers fell down.

Her friends had come; they had come for _her_.

The pain of that eclipsed her joy.

Kurosaki-kun's body fell from a great height, and where his heart should be was a hole the size of Orihime's entire world. Then she had felt the wind blow her hair as Ishida-kun's body was thrown past her.

W_hat should I do?_

She still didn't know.

She stood on the hard sand. She felt like a failure. A gust of wind blew grains of Hueco Mundo against her face, and the pain she felt smarting her cheeks then was the first physical hurt she'd felt since coming here. Not even the blows from the Arrancar girls had hurt like the sand pelting her eyelids and lips.

U_lquiorra?_

She wanted to say his name but her throat was too full of tears.

U_lquiorra?_

The arm that had reached for him was still outstretched, but he was gone with the sand and the wind.

And all that could cross the great divide was love.

E_nd_


End file.
